Shame : Negligent Mother

I once saw a movie about a young mother who dozed off in the bathtub while holding her baby. She woke up to realize that her baby had drowned in the bathwater while she was asleep. Long story short, she does not tell anyone, instead, she carries the trauma of this tragic accident for many years. Ultimately it affects her to the point that she cannot maintain a healthy relationship with anyone. I switched off the movie after a few minutes as it disturbed me greatly.

Later, I wondered why? It’s a tragic story for any mother, but I was haunted by it. I was pulled to do some inner investigation through which I was made aware of a wound that was stirred by this story. I recently uncovered the trauma behind this wound through a dream. This was one of the few significant dreams I have had.

Let me step back a bit here and talk about myself. I am a mother. I became a mother 16 years ago when I was 30. Motherhood has been a very challenging role for me. Difficult and painful akin to an emotional roller coaster ride, which had many lows and not enough highs.

My son is a beautiful, innocent autistic boy who is now a teenager. He is healthy physically and emotionally, strong willed, fun loving, sensitive with a charming sense of humour. Everyone that interacts with him gets enchanted by him. I am much more relaxed around him these days, than before, and have started seeing more highs in our life together. But it wasn’t always this way.

The infancy and toddler years were filled with illnesses and surgeries. This went on in some or other way until he was 9. After that his physical health improved but mental health was in tatters. He was plagued with anxiety and depression. He seemed to have lost interest in life.

But he is a fighter and does not give up easily. He has slowly and steadily stepped out of the shadows. He is now in a much better space physically and mentally and I think he is comfortable and relaxed.

His story is deeply intertwined with mine. Alongside his lows were my lows and my highs helped him reach his highs and vice versa.

During some of these low phases I wondered why this was happening to me?

Initially I felt I was being punished by God, but I didn’t really have an image of God as angry and punishing. That’s not how I thought of him. Nor did I sense that I was getting a karmic return for some evil I had done in a past life.

I was beginning to feel more and more that there was something I must have wanted from this experience. The cosmic mirror theory was beginning to make sense. I knew I was getting back what I held in my conscious or sub conscious mind. Rather than God punishing me, I felt I seemed to be punishing myself.

One day, I asked a different question: Why am I punishing myself in my motherhood? Why is it so difficult for me to be happy as a mother?

This takes me back to the dream. It was vivid and I remembered many details from it. As I wrote down all the details, I knew from how clear it was in my head that it was a message from my higher self, answering my question.  It explained how my current lifetime is affected by a past life and choices I made back then.

In the dream, I was again mother of my son from this life, but he was much younger, around 4 years old. We were both going out somewhere and were standing on the pavement just below our apartment complex. The complex was gated and we were inside the gates. I felt like we were safe and relaxed, just going about our daily business. My guess is we were waiting for someone in a car to pick us up. Just then someone called out to me, so I turned around and my attention got fixed on something else other than my son for a few minutes. I also walked a few steps away from him, maybe 15 – 20 steps. When I turned back to my son, he was gone. He had disappeared. He was lost!

The next scene I saw was meeting him again 25 years later. But he was a grown woman, not a man. I was puzzled at how that happened, but I didn’t have time to think as the dream moved on. I saw myself go up to her and attempt to speak to her lovingly, with a nostalgic feel. But with despair I realised she had no interest in speaking to me or spending even a minute with me.

I observed that she had grown into a bitter and angry young woman. She communicated that she hated me. I soon realized that she had no interest in having anything to do with me, so I retreated.

At that moment I felt so much pain, I thought my heart just broke. I felt guilt and remorse and finally I felt shame. I felt responsible for ruining her life, for damaging her as a person and I was overcome by shame. I was filled with a kind of anger at myself and a strong feeling that I didn’t like who I was.

I hated someone with a vengeance and that person was myself.

In the midst of feeling this unbearable pain I woke up. Even awake, the emotion was so raw that I burst into tears. I sobbed and moaned loudly for a long time. As I lay awake in my bed, I felt the pain of hurting my daughter fresh as if not a day had passed since that incident. I saw the guilt and shame solidifying and becoming a part of me. Because I could not undo what I had done. I could not change my daughter’s heart and make her happy again. She was bitter and I felt responsible for it. Almost like I could not let it go and didn’t want to let it go until I had repented and punished myself enough. This trauma was now a wound inside my sub conscious.

And the wound was what got stirred up when I saw the movie. The stored pain energy caused me to react the way I did to that scene. I felt I could be in her shoes. I had felt the same horrific shame when faced with my daughter 25 years later.

I also made the connection with my current life situation.

And understood why I was putting myself through the pain. I was punishing myself. For that mistake, that negligence of a few minutes where I lost my child and then lost out on raising him/her. I obviously was very remorseful and hard on myself.

I then wondered why I didn’t forgive myself when I was making my life plan before this embodiment. It must be that I could not forgive myself and move on without having compensated. I needed to go through the punishing circumstances of my current life situation to be able to reach that point of feeling like I’ve done enough! I have compensated for my mistake. To feel I have raised my child in the best way I could. Put my heart and soul and sweat and tears year after year after year. That I have not left any stone unturned in my effort. When I feel from inside, enough, I cannot do any more than this! After having burned out with exhaustion and overwhelm. Only then would I be able to forgive myself.

I think I wanted to prove to myself, maybe to God but actually to myself, that if I was put in the same situation again, I wouldn’t falter again, I would not abandon my child, no matter what! I wanted to prove this to myself and only then would I be ready to move on. I have pretty much been with him almost every day, hardly being away a couple of days every year. One time I left him for 10 days with grandparents when he was about 6 and that’s about it.

After discovering this past life connection, everything makes perfect sense. I have finally been able to forgive myself.

I must add that I probably could not if I hadn’t gone through the challenging experience of motherhood in this lifetime. Motherhood has been the single most difficult thing I have faced in this lifetime. Considering I was a high achiever throughout school, college and even at my job. I was good at anything I put my mind on. I think I could easily have picked a career of my choice and been very good at it, but I chose to be married and a mother.

All of this to expose the inner trauma of shame that I was holding on to from a past life experience. So that I could forgive myself and be free of the guilt and shame that I was holding on to.

As I explored and examined the shame I felt, I saw it in many areas. I reacted to many situations with shame, and the problem was not the situation, but the shame I carried. The situation was only a trigger to show me the shame in me. Now that I have seen it clearly, I can begin the simpler task of clearing out the energies from my being.

Namaste

#Motherhood #Psychology #Parenting #Shame